No trolling please.
D is a programming language. There's nothing about D which would be for profit
or
not for profit. You don't sell a programming language.
The compilers could be for profit if they were sold, but they aren't. All of
them
are open source, with the only snag being that the license for dmd's backend is
such that you can see the source but not copy it and change it and whatnot. The
frontend is entirely open source however, and both gdc and LDC are entirely
open
source. Regardless, they're all free to download and use.
You can probably buy enterprise support for dmd from Digital Mars like you can
with dmc, but I don't know anything about that, and that's buying support not
software.
It really doesn't make sense to ask whether D is for profit or not. Programming
languages aren't for profit. Their tools may be, but you don't buy or rent
programming languages, so asking whether D is for profit or not really doesn't
make any sense.
- Jonathan M Davis

It's a legitimate question, one that's been asked many times, and one
that I've never seen Walter answer. Instead, we have people who fill in
answers for him.
I think it would make people more comfortable to know what Walter thinks
with regard to D and money. Is he in it for money? If so, how does he
plan to make it?
There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be nice
to know up front and in what manner.

D is a programming language. There's nothing about D which would be for profit
or
not for profit. You don't sell a programming language.

Tell Google that programming languages aren't sold. They're being sued
by Oracle for essentially implementing Java. One of the big reasons
Oracle bought Sun was to get Java.

There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be nice
to know up front and in what manner.

I've been meaning to ask, and I'll just take this oppurtunity, and it relates
to what Jeff just said:
If one would like to donate money to D, how would one do that?
Would it even make any sense? Or be needed?
And this naturally raises the question: Who/what owns D? Is it a non-profit, a
group of people, or a business? And regardless of who owns D, is there any
D-only organisation that one could support, financially? I'm not demanding an
answer, I'm just sharing my thoughts.
I mean, it would feel weird to donate money to Digital Mars, a for-profit
company, that does all kinds of things, including C++, right? If I was to feel
confident in donating it would have to be to some sort of formally founded
non-profit legal body with some sort of constitution like "to further the
development of D" or something. I don't know how these things work. I guess
right now D is too small and the legal cost of just maintaining such an
organisation would surpass any donations anyway.
BR
/HF

There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be nice
to know up front and in what manner.

I've been meaning to ask, and I'll just take this oppurtunity, and it
relates to what Jeff just said:
If one would like to donate money to D, how would one do that? Would it
even make any sense? Or be needed?
And this naturally raises the question: Who/what owns D? Is it a
non-profit, a group of people, or a business? And regardless of who owns
D, is there any D-only organisation that one could support, financially?
I'm not demanding an answer, I'm just sharing my thoughts.
I mean, it would feel weird to donate money to Digital Mars, a
for-profit company, that does all kinds of things, including C++, right?
If I was to feel confident in donating it would have to be to some sort
of formally founded non-profit legal body with some sort of constitution
like "to further the development of D" or something. I don't know how
these things work. I guess right now D is too small and the legal cost
of just maintaining such an organisation would surpass any donations
anyway.

D is basically Walter's language. He decides what goes in and how stuff
works. People who live nearby are somewhat able to influence the process.
So far it doesn't look like any earmarked money has been used to buy
specific features. For example I doubt that even if you donate one
million USD, they won't rename the keywords or __traits into something
readable or add built-in first class tuples. I also doubt you can make
the dmc/dmd backend FOSS with any sum of money. If you wanted some
changes badly, I'd recommend donating the money to some democratic
community language without any BDFL persons.
I once saw that money has been used to support dsource / tango
development. Phobos OTOH is Andrei's child. I bet he earns at least
$20000 per month at facebook so you would need to be extremely rich to
persuade him or give something useful in return such as free time.

There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be nice
to know up front and in what manner.

I've been meaning to ask, and I'll just take this oppurtunity, and it
relates to what Jeff just said:
If one would like to donate money to D, how would one do that? Would it
even make any sense? Or be needed?
And this naturally raises the question: Who/what owns D? Is it a
non-profit, a group of people, or a business? And regardless of who owns
D, is there any D-only organisation that one could support, financially?
I'm not demanding an answer, I'm just sharing my thoughts.
I mean, it would feel weird to donate money to Digital Mars, a
for-profit company, that does all kinds of things, including C++, right?
If I was to feel confident in donating it would have to be to some sort
of formally founded non-profit legal body with some sort of constitution
like "to further the development of D" or something. I don't know how
these things work. I guess right now D is too small and the legal cost
of just maintaining such an organisation would surpass any donations
anyway.

D is basically Walter's language. He decides what goes in and how stuff
works. People who live nearby are somewhat able to influence the process.

This is a meritocracy: people who are good will exert an influence on
the language and its standard library. Don is an incredibly strong
contributor and he's living in Europe; I've only seen him once in my
life. If Don had language design as a focus, I'm sure he would very
strongly influence the definition of the language. This is because he is
talented, competent, and motivated. Steve is in New York City. I don't
know where other strong contributors are, but definitely they help shape
the language.

So far it doesn't look like any earmarked money has been used to buy
specific features. For example I doubt that even if you donate one
million USD, they won't rename the keywords or __traits into something
readable or add built-in first class tuples.

That would take someone rich and incredibly petty. It's not, however,
impossible that a corporation would seriously consider adoption of the
language but would have a specific need that needs be met as a
prerequisite. Such things happened with things like ABIs, interfacing
with other languages and systems, specific libraries, certain
optimizations etc.

I also doubt you can make
the dmc/dmd backend FOSS with any sum of money. If you wanted some
changes badly, I'd recommend donating the money to some democratic
community language without any BDFL persons.

I think that's just false. With money the backend could be bought from
Symantec.
Andrei

I also doubt you can make
the dmc/dmd backend FOSS with any sum of money. If you wanted some
changes badly, I'd recommend donating the money to some democratic
community language without any BDFL persons.

I think that's just false. With money the backend could be bought from
Symantec.
Andrei

What is so great about this back-end (no offense)? Why can it not be
replaced with something like LLVM or GCC? Why can we not have LDC or GDC be
the official compiler?

I also doubt you can make
the dmc/dmd backend FOSS with any sum of money. If you wanted some
changes badly, I'd recommend donating the money to some democratic
community language without any BDFL persons.

I think that's just false. With money the backend could be bought from
Symantec.
Andrei

What is so great about this back-end (no offense)? Why can it not be
replaced with something like LLVM or GCC? Why can we not have LDC or
GDC be
the official compiler?

Walter is intimately familiar with the current back-end, and he (perhaps
rightly) fears that if he looks at other back-ends, he is much more
likely to be sued for copyright infringement.
--
Simen

If you mean me, I'm in the Boston area (not exactly in Boston), and I
bring a thousand curses on you for suggesting I'm from NYC ;)
Unfortunately, all of us must turn our envious eyes on Green Bay and
Pittsburgh this week...
-Steve

There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be
nice to know up front and in what manner.

I've been meaning to ask, and I'll just take this oppurtunity, and it
relates to what Jeff just said:
If one would like to donate money to D, how would one do that? Would
it even make any sense? Or be needed?
And this naturally raises the question: Who/what owns D? Is it a
non-profit, a group of people, or a business? And regardless of who
owns D, is there any D-only organisation that one could support,
financially? I'm not demanding an answer, I'm just sharing my
thoughts.
I mean, it would feel weird to donate money to Digital Mars, a
for-profit company, that does all kinds of things, including C++,
right? If I was to feel confident in donating it would have to be to
some sort of formally founded non-profit legal body with some sort of
constitution like "to further the development of D" or something. I
don't know how these things work. I guess right now D is too small
and the legal cost of just maintaining such an organisation would
surpass any donations anyway.
BR /HF

The best thing for D would be if a large company with a FOSS presence
would use it. That means people would be implicitly paid for using and
contributing to D. It would also instil confidence in other companies to
use the language.
Beyond that, there is this site (I forgot the name) that allows people
to offer and ask money for certain projects. I guess that would be a way
to fund D projects.
Andrei

It's a legitimate question, one that's been asked many times, and one
that I've never seen Walter answer. Instead, we have people who fill in
answers for him.
I think it would make people more comfortable to know what Walter thinks
with regard to D and money. Is he in it for money? If so, how does he
plan to make it?
There's nothing wrong with being in it for money, but it would be nice
to know up front and in what manner.

"Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg gmx.com> a écrit
Why are you trying to change the meaning of Open Source ?
Open Source comes with principles. It comes with a spirit. It about freedom.
It's about *freely* sharing knowledge, tools, ...
It does not come for more rights for the one who started distributing the
knowledge.
AFAIK, D is not a trademarked language. So everybody can produce a compiler
for it.
DMD is Digital Mars D. The Digital Mars implementation of D.
Digital Mars is the vendor of this compiler.
See:
enum Vendor; Master list of D compiler vendors.
DigitalMars Digital Mars
const Vendor vendor : Which vendor produced this compiler.
DMD is not Open Source.
The backend licence is not an open source license.
There is zero souce code for snn.lib (which is a part of DMD).
>
> D is a programming language. There's nothing about D which would be for
profit or
> not for profit. You don't sell a programming language.
>
> The compilers could be for profit if they were sold, but they aren't.
All of them
> are open source, with the only snag being that the license for dmd's
backend is
> such that you can see the source but not copy it and change it and
whatnot. The
> frontend is entirely open source however, and both gdc and LDC are
entirely open
> source. Regardless, they're all free to download and use.
>
> You can probably buy enterprise support for dmd from Digital Mars like
you can
> with dmc, but I don't know anything about that, and that's buying
support not
> software.
>
> It really doesn't make sense to ask whether D is for profit or not.
Yes it does.
Because one must look at the spirit. Not at the words.
When we talk about "D". We talk of the whole. It's not about the 4th letter
of the alphabet.
Open Source community will glady help a truely Open Source Project.
D has it's place there.
A lot of individuals has worked very very hard to get there place under the
Sun. They are trying to create a world where there is collaboration and no
competition.
Every body is welcomed to join the efforts.

Programming languages aren't for profit. Their tools may be, but you don't
buy or rent programming languages, so asking whether D is for profit or
not really doesn't make any sense.
- Jonathan M Davis

"Jonathan M Davis"<jmdavisProg gmx.com> a écrit
Why are you trying to change the meaning of Open Source ?
Open Source comes with principles. It comes with a spirit. It about freedom.
It's about *freely* sharing knowledge, tools, ...
It does not come for more rights for the one who started distributing the
knowledge.
AFAIK, D is not a trademarked language. So everybody can produce a compiler
for it.
DMD is Digital Mars D. The Digital Mars implementation of D.
Digital Mars is the vendor of this compiler.
See:
enum Vendor; Master list of D compiler vendors.
DigitalMars Digital Mars
const Vendor vendor : Which vendor produced this compiler.
DMD is not Open Source.
The backend licence is not an open source license.
There is zero souce code for snn.lib (which is a part of DMD).
>
> D is a programming language. There's nothing about D which would be for
profit or
> not for profit. You don't sell a programming language.
>
> The compilers could be for profit if they were sold, but they aren't.
All of them
> are open source, with the only snag being that the license for dmd's
backend is
> such that you can see the source but not copy it and change it and
whatnot. The
> frontend is entirely open source however, and both gdc and LDC are
entirely open
> source. Regardless, they're all free to download and use.
>
> You can probably buy enterprise support for dmd from Digital Mars like
you can
> with dmc, but I don't know anything about that, and that's buying
support not
> software.
>
> It really doesn't make sense to ask whether D is for profit or not.
Yes it does.
Because one must look at the spirit. Not at the words.
When we talk about "D". We talk of the whole. It's not about the 4th letter
of the alphabet.
Open Source community will glady help a truely Open Source Project.
D has it's place there.
A lot of individuals has worked very very hard to get there place under the
Sun. They are trying to create a world where there is collaboration and no
competition.
Every body is welcomed to join the efforts.

Programming languages aren't for profit. Their tools may be, but you don't
buy or rent programming languages, so asking whether D is for profit or
not really doesn't make any sense.
- Jonathan M Davis

No.
Aren't you mixing up free with $ ?
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
and read some of the history of the FSF.
There are free (0 $) products/software that comes with no source and a
little freedom.
Some vendors associate free with 0$, an solely with $.
By doing this, they put a price on freedom.
Freedom begins by free. There is a reason for this.
Exchanging money is a legitimate way of exchanging energy.
Problems arise when this is the only way of exchange.
I think Walter is making an effort to go Open Source. His intentions are not
clear to the mass because he never expressed them. He may not be at ease to
do so.
He sure did within the inner circle of D.
Look around. The world is becoming open.
There was a time, when Open Source was not invented, when giving away
"source code", would have been viewed as a crime, a friend of mine, gaved me
the source code of a fortran compiler.
That source code camed on microfilm. I was so excited. In a state of joy.
I read all of it with a a microscope! I learned. I shared.

No.
Aren't you mixing up free with $ ?
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
and read some of the history of the FSF.
There are free (0 $) products/software that comes with no source and a
little freedom.
Some vendors associate free with 0$, an solely with $.
By doing this, they put a price on freedom.
Freedom begins by free. There is a reason for this.
Exchanging money is a legitimate way of exchanging energy.
Problems arise when this is the only way of exchange.
I think Walter is making an effort to go Open Source. His intentions are
not clear to the mass because he never expressed them. He may not be at
ease to do so.
He sure did within the inner circle of D.
Look around. The world is becoming open.
There was a time, when Open Source was not invented, when giving away
"source code", would have been viewed as a crime, a friend of mine, gaved
me the source code of a fortran compiler.
That source code camed on microfilm. I was so excited. In a state of joy.
I read all of it with a a microscope! I learned. I shared.

Yes, you're mixing up Open Source and Free Software. The FSF is about Free
Software. They think that people have a right to source code, and that all
source code should be free as in freedom. Open Source is much more pragmatic.
It's about making the source available, because that results in better
software.
It's the difference between the philosophies of Richard Stallman and Linus
Torvalds. It's a huge difference in attitude.
They _do_ tend to use the same licenses, since open vs free is very much a
matter of attitude and goal rather than code, but there are gradations in
licenses with GLP v3 being more of a Free Software license whereas BSD or Boost
are more along the lines of Open Source, because they have fewer restrictions.
Typically though, there's no real difference between an Open Source and Free
Software project from a coding perspective.
The dmd frontend is open source. The backend can't be because Symantec owns it,
but the code is available to view, and you can submit patches. I believe that
gdc and LDC are fully open source. Phobos and druntime use the Boost license.
They're definitely open source. Whether the intention of any of the
contributors
to those projects is to support Open Source, Free Software, or just work on
code
that they need or like is completely up to them.
If you want to use dmd, gdc, or LDC in an open source or free software project,
you are free to do so. If you want to use them in proprietary projects, then
you
are free to do so. I really don't think that the dmd, druntime, or Phobos team
is trying to make any kind of political statement here. As a whole, we are
emmenently practical. Some of us may very well be big supporters of Free
Software. I don't know. You'll have to talk to individual developers to know
exactly how they feel.
But as a whole, we're just trying to get a solid language with solid tools out
there, because we love the language, we want it to succeed, and we want to use
it.
- Jonathan M Davis